By Joy Velykorodnyy

As the nights draw in, and our thoughts turn towards Christmas, we can often find ourselves worrying about how we are going to afford those little extras this year. Christians Against Poverty have helped thousands of people through their money course, and have now revamped and updated it. We will be running the updated course in the run-up to Christmas and more courses in the New Year.

By Simon Hawking

As winter draws near and the temperature drops, many of us are faced with the challenge of keeping our homes warm without breaking the bank. Fear not, we’ve got a few budget-friendly tips up our sleeves to help you keep cosy without a hefty heating bill. Let’s dive into some ways to reduce costs during the chilly months…

We’ve been having a great time at our October half term scheme! We have been based at the Energize Youth Center in Birchwood this week and we’ve met some great young people. As we’ve been talking to them, some of them have mentioned that they wouldn’t be doing anything over their half-term if there were no schemes in their local area which makes us so joyful that we can facilitate activity days. Some of these young people would just be roaming the streets for something to do without schemes so it’s great we can give them a safe place to go and have fun.

As the nights draw in, and our thoughts turn towards Christmas, we can often find ourselves worrying about how we are going to afford those little extras this year. Christians Against Poverty have helped thousands of people through their money course, and have now revamped and updated it. We will be running the updated course in the run-up to Christmas and more courses in the New Year.

It’s time for our annual Acts Trust fundraiser! This year we will be…

by Kerry Robinson – Lincoln NLC Coordinator & Michelle Russell – NLC Project Worker

The Night Light Cafe project is growing and expanding on a monthly basis. From a small seed of an idea, we now have over 25 cafes open across Lincolnshire! With more opening in the next few weeks!

We would love to share some exciting updates about our Lincoln Nightlight Cafe ……

Our Summer Holiday Schemes are finished and we had a great time!

We also ran three FREE Family Fun Days across the Summer, which were so successful and enjoyed by the local communities. Each Family Fun Day had many activities for people to get involved with from sports, to inflatables, giant bubble workshops, food and drink catering vans and much more.

We worked over 5 estates (Moorland, Birchwood, Monks Road, Ermine & St Giles), and each week was incredible. We also did a lot of trips over summer, and took so many young people on trips they don’t usually get to go on, including: Mablethorpe Beach, Drayton Manor Theme Park, Jump Inc Trampoline Park and Playzone Soft Play Centre.

The families who came to these were so grateful and we often heard sentences like “I can’t believe you guys do this for free! That’s so good!… We wouldn’t get to do much in summer as a family at all if we didn’t come to this.”

Our mornings generally looked like the HAF (Holiday Activities & Food) Programme, where we would teach the children something about healthy food and get them to try some different fruit or vegetable which they probably hadn’t eaten before. The HAF programme is specifically for children who are on Free School Meals during term time, which meant this helped the families who were struggling with the cost of living crisis during the holidays, as well as encouraging the children to get involved in their local youth work activities.

The afternoons were then filled with activities which would vary from either a local trip, or an afternoon of workshops, multi-sports, games and crafts in the same location which we had previously led the morning HAF programme.

Each day was filled with excitement and joy as we all got to know each other better and the young people got to meet other young people.

One really positive testimonial story, was of a young girl who said “I really love Energize! Can you guys do this everyday because this would be so good for me and my friends to come to!” We love hearing stories and testimonials like this, as it fills our hearts with joy and spurs us onto keep going, as we look to the future.

Our plans have already started for next Summers Holiday Schemes, and we can’t wait!

I’m sure mine isn’t the only house where stress levels have been rising recently! It always seems so unfair that our kids have to wait so long for their exam results, with so much of their future hanging in the balance. My kids have sat their GCSEs and both have provisional places to study further, but until that dreaded day, everything is on hold.

On Thursday 10th August, the Energize team along with Alive Church, hosted a Family Fun Day at the Arboretum and I’d love to tell you all about it! The wider Acts team were encouraged to help on the day so we all descended in the glorious sunshine to help out.

by Stacey Marriott – Night Light Cafe Manager

I recently googled the pointy things that are growing out of my cheese plant and discovered that they are called ‘aerial roots’ and grow to latch on to other plants to give support to the cheese plant as it grows. Wow! The cheese plant by design develops its own support structure. How cleverly created.